Here's Why You Didn't See Meghan Markle's Niece Ashleigh At Her Wedding
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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle just dropped the first three episodes of their bombshell docuseries, Harry & Meghan, and the public is finally getting the inside scoop on the trials and tribulations the royal couple (and their loved ones) have faced in recent years. Specifically, the doc features some intimate interviews with Meghan's mom, Doria Ragland, who's been notoriously silent on the topic of her famous daughter, and a new family member that people haven't met yet: Meghan's niece.
The members of Meghan's family who have spoken to the press in recent years haven't been very kind to the former Suits actress and now-wife of Prince Harry. For one, her father, Thomas Markle, has repeatedly fed rumors to the press, even allegedly staging paparazzi photos for money, and Meghan's half-sister and half-brother both said some terrible things about her, too. So it’s very refreshing to hear from a woman named Ashleigh Hale, Meghan's niece, who speaks out in the new Netflix docuseries about her wonderful relationship with her aunt.
But if you're wondering who the heck Ashleigh Hale is, you're definitely not alone. Here’s the deal:
Who is Ashleigh Hale?
Meghan's half-sister, Samantha, has a daughter named Ashleigh. Unfortunately, Ashleigh is estranged from Samantha (as is Meghan, but more on that in a sec), and has been for a long time. In the series, Ashleigh appears and explains that she reconnected with her Markle family later in life. And while she developed a very close connection with her aunt, Meghan, things didn't go so well with her mom.
Eventually, Ashleigh stopped talking to her mom after Samantha repeatedly spoke out about Meghan in the press.
"Samantha pretty quickly began expressing a lot of angry words about Meg towards me," Ashleigh said. "What was communicated to me was maybe some resentment, and it felt like no matter what I said, you know, her perspective didn't change and seemed to get angrier and bigger, and we stopped talking. Some people you just can't reason with."
Who is Samantha Markle?
Samantha Markle is Meghan Markle's much older half-sister (they share the same dad). According to her author bio, Samantha has multiple sclerosis and has been in a wheelchair for most of her adult life.
“She continues to roll uphill as a squeaky wheel, defending truth, and inspiring others to look beyond social labels, and fake news, so that we can all rise to our full potential as informed participants in our social world,” the bio reads.
Samantha and Meghan are estranged and aren't on the best terms. She wasn't invited to the royal wedding, and has said nasty things about Meghan in the press. She even published a memoir in 2021 titled "The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister (Part 1)."
Samantha has not appeared in the docuseries so far.
Ashleigh was raised by her paternal grandparents.
She shared this tidbit in the docuseries, too, explaining that her grandparents were granted custody of 2-year-old Ashleigh and her brother.
“Ultimately, they did adopt us so I was raised by my paternal grandparents, for me, they were my parents,” she says. “My biological mother, I've not seen her since I was six years old.” However, Ashleigh said that she and Samantha reconnected in 2007, which was the same year she graduated from college—and Meghan reached out afterwards.
"I just remember my dad saying...'Samantha found her daughter and I was like...'Oh if you have her email address, I want to email her,” Meghan shares.
The two began writing notes to each other, and eventually got really close and would go on trips together. Meghan even attended Ashleigh's wedding (at least based on photos shared in the doc).
Ashleigh attended Hollins University.
She got her bachelor's degree in international studies and French from Hollins in 2007, before going on to study law at the Charleston School of Law, according to her LinkedIn. Ashleigh also later got her master of law degree at The George Washington International Law School.
She’s a business immigration attorney.
Ashleigh works as an associate at Fragomen, a company that focuses on immigration services, in the San Francisco Bay Area, per her LinkedIn. Before that, she was an associate attorney at Sumner Immigration Law and a contract attorney for Capital One bank.
Meghan thinks of Ashleigh as a little sister.
Ashleigh says in the docuseries that there’s a “sister element” to her relationship with Meghan, adding that she’s “a best friend, she's kinda all the things.”
Meghan adds, “I wanted a sister and she was like a little sister. Ash was put through quite a bit by the media just through association. I didn't want her life to be plagued with all that drama.”
The royal comms team said Ashleigh couldn’t come to Meghan and Harry's wedding.
With Samantha repeatedly trashing Meghan in the press, and Meghan having no intention of inviting her estranged half-sister to her nuptials, the royal communication team said that it would be too hard to explain why her sister wasn't invited, while her niece was, Meghan says in the doc. As a result, the communications team told Meghan and Harry that they shouldn't have Ashleigh come.
"How do we explain that this half-sister isn't invited to the wedding but the half-sister's daughter is," Meghan explains. "So with Ashleigh, the guidance at the time was to not have her come to our wedding. I was in the car with H, and I called her and we had her on speakerphone and we talked her through what guidance we were being given and why this assessment was being made and...and that's painful.”
Ashleigh says after this that she was “hurt on some level” but “understood where it was coming from.” She added, “to know that it was because of my biological mother that this relationship that's so important to me was impacted in that way...to feel like because of her it was taken away, has been hard.”
What else does Ashleigh say in the doc?
On the whole, Ashleigh repeatedly stresses that she’s definitely Team Meghan and that she’s not impressed with the things her biological mom has said about her aunt to the press. These two definitely seem pretty close.
More episodes of Harry & Meghan will be dropping on Dec. 15. Stay tuned for more!
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